1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the field of high speed processing of documents, such as checks, so as to produce digital images thereof, these images then being indexed and cumulatively stored on mass storage devices for later retrieval.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Financial institutions are generally required to maintain archives of financial documents and related data for several years. Typically, these archives are maintained using the original documents and/or microfilm images of the documents. In theory, imaging technology offers many advantages in maintaining these archives. However, in practice, the use of this technology to create and manage billions of document images, such as in check archives, has not been practically achieved prior to this invention.
The use of a computer-based image processing system or image capture platform to scan documents, such as checks and the like, and to then digitally store the results on mass storage devices is generally known in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,812, incorporated herein by reference, discloses such a check processing system that is based upon an IBM 3890 high speed document reader/sorter wherein features, such as feeding checks to an image scanner, monitoring image quality and possibly interrupting the process as a result of poor image quality, image data compression, image resolution control, parallel processing of image data, and storage of check images on both high speed and low speed mass storage devices, such as magnetic storage and optical storage, are provided.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,125, incorporated herein by reference, describes an information storage and retrieval system wherein a digital camera scans documents to form video images. A data processor generates index information corresponding thereto. The video images and the corresponding index information are stored on different areas of optical media. The index information is generated by the use of self-index software that is responsive to text, and manually by the use of a keyboard. Remote location access is provided.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,170,466, incorporated herein by reference, discloses a storage/retrieval system wherein documents, such as checks, are scanned, digitized, compressed and stored in archival modules. The stored documents can then be retrieved and processed by workstation operators.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,187,750, incorporated herein by reference, discloses a checking account document processing, archival magnetic/optical storage, and printout system having image capture and image retrieval functions.
Prior to the present invention, one of the major impediments to the creation of a high volume image archive system was the practical difficulty associated with creating and managing an index of the billions of archived documents. Existing archival image storage devices (typically referred to as filefolder systems) are designed to store and index a volume of items that is typically at least 1,000 times smaller (i.e., typically on the order of 1 million items) than the volume of items that are stored and indexed by operation of the present invention.
The above-mentioned filefolder systems typically use an indexing method that simply assigns an index record to each item. This index record associates a unique identifier (e.g., a document capture sequence number combined with a capture date) with a pointer to the actual physical location of the item on a particular archive storage media volume. The index records for all archived items are then accumulated in a large table, or file, called an all-items file. At retrieval time, this table is searched for the index record of the item(s) to be retrieved. This index record then provides the information necessary to locate the item on an archive storage media volume.
Current computer technology places a practical limit on the size of such an all-items index file that is well below the billion item requirement of a high volume image archive system that is used to archive images of documents, such as checks.
Prior to the present invention, another major impediment to the creation of a high volume image archive system was the practical difficulty associated with managing image capture, quality assurance, indexing and archive of millions of documents daily, on a cumulative basis, without requiring human intervention. For example, existing image filefolder systems typically require human intervention on a permanent basis for at least the indexing and quality assurance steps of the process. If thousands of documents are to be captured, quality assured, indexed and archived each minute, human intervention of even a few seconds per document is clearly not practical.